Nick Fury
Colonel Nicholas J. Fury is the head honcho of SHIELD, the Strategic... whatever. SHIELD fights the bad guys that want to claim world domination. They take on the worst criminal and superpowered masterminds in an effort to maintain peace for the general public. While nominally linked to the US government, SHIELD's mandate is more global in scope, and has many ties to the Sentinels project and the United Nations. Background Nick Fury was born in 1917 in Hell's Kitchen, NYC. His pop was a WW1 aviator, and Nick always saw joining the Army as the means of getting out of his circumstances. He learned to box as a kid, training with a local gym as a means to keep him out of trouble. His schoolwork wasn't stellar and there wasn't enough money especially during the Depression, so college was out of the question. Nick never had problems with doing an honest day's work, but his goal was to join the Army and serve his country. He got his chance in WW2, enlisting as a private and quickly earning his sergeant's stripes. As a sergeant, he led a soon-to-be elite unit called the Howlin' Commandos, perhaps one of the few racially integrated units in the Army. He never learned how to be racist or a bigot, judging men (and women) based on their actions, not on their gender or the color of their skin. The Howlers were instrumental in the European theatre, and Nick learned of the existence of metahumans and super soldiers, even fighting along side and learning the secret identity of Captain America himself. At the tail end of the war, Nick was injured and was treated by a shady scientist named Professor Sternberg, who injected him with something called the Infinity Formula. Unfortunately, Sternberg wasn't able to save his left eye, and Nick eventually went on to lose 95% sight in it, wearing an eyepatch from then on. 'course, a soldier as good as Nick couldn't be left to fade away. He was tapped to run some shady ops in Korea, beginning his tenure with OSS and the CIA and other similar groups. By the time the Korean Conflict was over, Nick was a full-bird colonel, a far cry from his days as a mere sergeant, but he never forgot his roots. The distance between himself and his men began to widen as he kept having to keep more secrets, but he still took care of his people, even at the potential loss of life and limb. Still, he kept in touch with many of the surviving Howlers, particularly Dum Dum Dugan, and while he wore suits more often than fatigues in his role as super spy and master of espionage, Nick kept doing jobs both for and in the military and also out of it, in the civilian world, but always for the US government. Most of his work in the 50s and 60s was blackops in nature or stuff that will never be declassified, to hell with the Freedom of Information Act. He traveled all over the globe and was quietly instrumental in various military successes for the American government, although more and more of his work was on an international level, often at the behest of the UN. It was then that he was approached to join a new organization. Nick was brought in and dazzled with a lot of cool tech, but he wasn't buying this story until he saw what the group was meant to do: keep the peace and stop the bad guys. SHIELD needed a director at the top that couldn't be bought, and Nick had earned himself that reputation. It also needed someone who would do what it takes to get the job done. It needed someone who didn't have patience for beancounters, who took care of its people, and Nick was that. He took on the job of director and put his stamp on it. He installed his old friend Dugan as his right-hand man and led SHIELD through adventures in the Far East, in Africa, in Europe itself, in America, everywhere they were needed. Their mandate has been global, bankrolled by the UN more than the US, although always with a close association with the US military and spy organizations that spawned it. Metahumans were included in SHIELD's roster at Nick's behest, although there aren't many. After the crackdown on metahumans, most of the ones working for SHIELD were quietly let go or otherwise kept on the down low. SHIELD of course has fought against other organizations that serve the cause of evil, particularly HYDRA, founded by his old WW2 enemy Baron von Strucker. If Nick had a nemesis, it's Strucker. Nick also had to deal with the fact that he had to keep taking an annual injection of the Infinity Formula, else he'd age rapidly and die. And Sternberg was extorting him for money in increasing amounts. MUX History Logs Category:Characters Category:Features Category:Taken Category:Hero